Posted by jayembee on 03/13/06 09:36

"Bernie Woodham" <birnhamwood@insightbb.com> wrote:

> I got to wondering tonight how many people are out there collecting
> multiple dvd editions of a given film. And if certain films in
> particular are more popular in this way.

It depends. I've *bought* multiple editions of some films, but in
most cases, I ended up giving the older (less desirable) editions
to the local library. Such as, for example, the Image/Universal
releases that were later given new releases by Universal.

But it depends largely on whether I consider something to be
"collectible". By that, I mean collectible for *my* purposes,
not because I think it'll be worth a jillion dollars on eBay in a
few years. For example, I collect Criterions, and in some cases,
I may have a previous edition of a Criterion title that I want
to keep for some reason, while still getting the Criterion. Like
having KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS in the Anchor Bay Alec Guinness
boxed set, and then buying the Criterion. Or keeping the Kino
edition of THE TIN DRUM after buying the Criterion.

If there's something "different" about the new releases, I keep
the older ones. Like the Warner/MK2 Chaplins vs the Image/Blackhawk
versions.

There are also instances in which I have R1 and non-R1 editions of
the same titles. I started out buying the UK editions of BUFFY and
ANGEL because they were released well in advance of the US editions.
And then -- at least with BUFFY -- I bought the US editions since
they were in Whedon's preferred fullscreen.

Probably the extreme case is FARSCAPE. My wife and I are both big
fans of the show, and she's a collector (memorabilia, etc.) of the
series, so we have the original single-disc R1 editions, the R1
season set editions, the new "Starburst" editions, the original R2-UK
releases, the R2-UK season sets, and the R4 season sets. We've resisted
the Japanese, French, and German editions...so far.

(And that's not counting the fact that each of us started collecting
first the R2-UK releases, then the R1 releases before we became a
couple, so for all of the first season, and much of the second, we
have duplicate copies.)

Also, I'm a sucker for "uniform sets", and so have kept the Universal
"Classic Monsters" releases even after buying the "Legacy Collection"
releases.

Some of this is waning, though, as space has become more of a problem.
I just recently bought the new "Complete Emma Peel Megaset" box. I
didn't have the original Megaset, as I had the original releases,
but I found the new set for a reasonable price, and it's much more
compact on the shelf than the original sets. I'm tempted to keep the
original sets just to be uniform with the Honor Blackman and Linda
Thorson sets, but I really don't think I can justify the space issue.

-- jayembee

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